So often when one hears of a near-death experience, the mind turns to hospital workers holding defibrillator paddles shouting “clear” while a disembodied self hovers in a doorway heading ethereally toward the light.

Or so we think, or so we’ve been told, or so we believe. Or don’t. And then there are what I call the far more common “nearby” death experience. The drunken driver heading the wrong way through the intersection that misses you by seconds and hits the other guy. The hiker who fell off the same trail you hiked yesterday. The lightning bolt that struck the house next door.

Most people, if they thought about it, could come up with a list. And yet some stand out through the years. The number six bus in Jerusalem that I boarded every day for a year and which I had completely forgotten about until I heard, some three decades later, that it had been blown up in a terrorist attack. The World Trade Center where we lunched in August 2001 that was only ashes and smoke before the September credit card bill arrived. Most recently, the neighbor five doors down stabbed four times in his sleep during a housebreak in the middle of the night.

It was practically routine for our family. My eldest daughter would return like a homing pigeon from wherever she was, spend the evening before “carb loading” with family, and a fitful night with visions of mile-markers dancing in her head. This marathon was special because it would be her last before her wedding day. By next April she would be filing her tax returns jointly.

At an ungodly hour the next morning, she would board the Springfield Harrier running club’s bus and shortly after 10 take the first step in a 26.2 mile journey that would end just beyond the Prudential Center in downtown Boston, where we and thousands of others would be waiting to cheer her on, snap a picture, make a toast and head home.

If the results were good she would smile and vow “never again.” If the finish time was disappointing she would frown and scowl “never again.”

And so it went over the last 10 years as never again turned to once again, again and again until Monday.

My wife and I, along with our middle daughter and her boyfriend, were decamped as usual near Boylston Street fixing our gaze in search of the runner with the red top and pony tail and doing our marathon math to calculate when she might come into view. If we missed her, as we occasionally did, we would wait another 25 minutes and head to the family pickup area beyond the finish line a few blocks away.

The race was 3 hours and 15 minutes old.

Five minutes later we saw her, cheeks flushed but running gamely knowing the end was in sight. Our math and her exact starting time was sufficiently cloudy that we didn’t know if she had done a personal best but we were prepared to offer congratulations or sympathy as needed.

The pickup went with the cool precision that befitted longtime marathon parents. Her time – exactly the same as last year’s – was greeted with the fatherly wisdom that the same time a year later is really an improvement and we all decamped to a nearby Legal Seafoods to celebrate with chardonnay and oysters.

We had stopped noticing, but the race was now 4 hours and 9 minutes old.

We were mid-oyster when the text messages flurried in to her phone and ours. “Are you OK?” they seemed to shout.

We were mostly surprised. My daughter had been in so many marathons that the fact of her finishing was hardly breaking news; and as near as we could tell oyster eating – despite an occasional red tide scare – was hardly hazardous.

Suddenly word spread through the restaurant and a crowd formed around the TVs at the bar.

There had been an explosion at the finish line. Or two. Six were injured, someone was dead. There was sure to be more. Cell towers were down. Outside the restaurant, people were streaming away from the finish line; police were everywhere; sirens punctured the air.

Information — and misinformation — abounded. In the modern age of communications everyone is a journalist, but everyone can be wrong. A construction guy said it was a blown manhole cover. Someone heard the JFK library was under attack. Athletes – many shivering under aluminum capes – and spectators were streaming in lots of directions going pretty much nowhere. The Prudential Center and Copley Hotel had been declared a crime scene and were under evacuation. Police were ordering motorists to make U-turns to the next intersection where they would be instructed to make U-turns again. There was yellow tape everywhere.

People who didn’t know anything were offering advice; anyone in charge wasn’t talking. Our car, which we had thought was safely snoozing in the Prudential basement garage, was trapped.

We were uninjured, but clueless.

We tried to focus on the big picture. We were together. We were unhurt. We would get through this. Thank goodness we were eagle-eyed and our daughter was not 15 minutes slower.

And so we wandered, that same stunned, aimless, PTSD-walk that we see so often on the nightly news from faraway places.

Except we were in Boston, and the confused, stunned people were us.

We formed our own evacuation plan. We would hitch a ride on the Harriers bus. My middle daughter and her boyfriend would navigate the subway system back to his house. We later learned along with everyone else that the explosions had killed three and sent hundreds to the hospitals. Some would lose limbs, others would have scars that would take a long time – if ever – to heal.

We would have friends and family to assure and a car to bail out sooner or later.